Sidebar Sidebar
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

Thunderbolt Details Emerge: Bus Power, Mini DisplayPort, and More

Back to Atari!!

HA! this brings it all back to my atari 800 xl. back in my day, (1985) i did the EXACT same thing. i daisy chained my:

64 K atari 800 XL to my
Single sided Double denstity 5 1/4" floppy drive to my
300 baud modem to my
Epson dot matrix printer!

Yeah baby!! it took 30 years, but my ATARI FINALLY WINS!!!!!
 
I want to see a Thunderbolt enabled monitor with built-in PCIe GPU. :)
The perfect companion to a 11" MBA
 
vettori said:
Does this mean I can finally use two external displays with the new MBPro ?
Click to expand...

If you can find one display with 2 TB ports (or potentially a TB hub / dock) then I think the possibility could be there. That would be cool. I love my macbook with an external display setup giving me two displays (which is sweet with Expose). Imagine what you could to with 3 displays.

I am going to miss my displays if I go back to work for a company that only allows 1. when I had 3 at my last job. I had my outlook and IM opened on one, the other 2 were for projects I was working on (usually watching 1 / waiting for it to finish - while running another).

My mom came to visit and said "OMG"; my wife was like "geek". I had 3 monitors on my PC, and my macbook with external monitor. 5 screens running stuff for work.
 
Working with HD on a daily basis I can´t wait to not have to wait for file transfers after a days shooting.
This will be awsome.
 
err404 said:
Thunderbolt seems great. I like the idea of a single connector for ANY type of device. Unfortunatly we are heading down the same road we did with USB2.0 vs FW. I hope we dont end up with seperate external devices for PCs and Macs.
Click to expand...

Yep, it looks like it, and what is the most frustrating is that we gonna have millions of manufacturers sticking with USB 3.0 and and adopting thunderbolt at all, and have other ones that would alter cable connector to their liking, therefore more money to be spend on different cables and devices.

This is Firewire VS USB all over again.

Just one thought makes me cringe already.
 
mscriv said:
This is really a game changer for those that complain about Macs lacking the ability for expansion and upgrades. With Thunderbird we're talking about one cable that opens up numerous possibilities including external graphics cards, storage, etc..

From the sound of things companies are signing on pretty quick. Once audio/video gear starts to feature the port it will be game over for the FW and USB that most of us are used to now. Think about transferring GB's of HD camcorder footage in just a few seconds. Pretty awesome if you ask me. I have no doubt that it will become a standard port on Macs across the entire line.
Click to expand...

It's not only that; it's about Apple having the DOMINANT I/O technology over any other competitor for at least one year, a technology which is quickly building up on vendors...once more, Apple shows the way to the future with a much superior bus..!
 
Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_2_1 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/533.17.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.0.2 Mobile/8C148 Safari/6533.18.5)

Great that we are back on Macs. What a bunch of non sense childish posts on the iPhone threads.

Some questions:
- Are there any Blu-Ray drives that can be used now?
- What happens when you plug/Un-plug the cable ? The devices have to be unpowered before doing that? Ejected?


Maybe when the upgrade in the future for the optical non-powered version then Apple will use the patent recently showed up, so part of the incoming power to power up some of the devices on the daisy chain? The Mac will need at least 2 of these ports though.
- Do current virtual machine software (virtual box, VMware, Fusion) do support TB?
-Boot Camp, windows support this also?


How do you think :apple: will implement this in the iPods, iPhones and iPads? As they have to have USB in Europe? Will they put both ports? Or provide 2 cables: one TB to TB, and other TB to USB? Or an adapter? Um...seems to be contradicting or te transition will be too slow?
 
err404 said:
I want to see a Thunderbolt enabled monitor with built-in PCIe GPU. :)
The perfect companion to a 11" MBA
Click to expand...

At first my head exploded over this idea. Moving the graphics card out of the PC and into the monitor. Great for some things, (upgradeable monitors? hmmm). After pondering it, for high end graphics cards you need a lot of cooling. People like quiet PC's. So do you really want the fan of your Mega graphics card built into the display (upgradeable or not) buzzing away while you game 3 feet away? I'd rather keep the noisy stuff away from my face.
 
McGiord said:
Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_2_1 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/533.17.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.0.2 Mobile/8C148 Safari/6533.18.5)

Great that we are back on Macs. What a bunch of non sense childish posts on the iPhone threads.

Some questions:
- Are there any Blu-Ray drives that can be used now?
- What happens when you plug/Un-plug the cable ? The devices have to be unpowered before doing that? Ejected?


Maybe when the upgrade in the future for the optical non-powered version then Apple will use the patent recently showed up, so part of the incoming power to power up some of the devices on the daisy chain? The Mac will need at least 2 of these ports though.
- Do current virtual machine software (virtual box, VMware, Fusion) do support TB?
-Boot Camp, windows support this also?


How do you think :apple: will implement this in the iPods, iPhones and iPads? As they have to have USB in Europe? Will they put both ports? Or provide 2 cables: one TB to TB, and other TB to USB? Or an adapter? Um...seems to be contradicting or te transition will be too slow?
Click to expand...

If the daisy-chain works as with the good ol' pass-through ADB, it won't be necessary to unpower any devices...if I am remember correctly, that is. :rolleyes:
 
diddl14 said:
Intel spec states that the connectors will be the same. I'm guessing that the conversion from copper to fiber will be done in the plug instead of in the device. This makes compatibility a non-issue, except for power. One could however argue that fiber would only be used over longer distances (>3m) where it is likely that the connected device is self powered anyway (like raid arrays).
Click to expand...

Oh cool, thanks. I was wondering about this too. This kinda makes sense but it raises up another question: Wouldn't the copper connector act as a bottleneck to the optical beam in this case? I mean, it's the copper that's slowing us down, right? Hmm...

Maybe they'll switch to gold or silver for better conductivity in future connections. Would that help After-all, it's not like manufacturers would have to make a whole wire out of it anymore so it's possibly quite feasible....
 
Can't wait for the Mini Server with Thunderbolt!

My main gripe with the Mini Server is that it doesn't have eSATA (for an external RAID) and it has only one Ethernet port.

Now I am sure someone will come up with an external PCIe chassis that connects through Thunderbolt and I can them daisy-chain:

Mini Server <-> Thunderbolt RAID <-> External chassis with a dual- or quad-port Ethernet card

It won't be good looking, but will work great inside that rack...
 
johndoejohndoes said:
I don't think I'll watch a blue ray through my Laptop streamed to my TV...Just saying. And not to sound like a jerk...but everything I have (external Hard Drive, iPod, etc.) already syncs pretty fast...so uh, ya....YA FOR USELESS TECHNOLOGY!
Click to expand...

And old ladies that drive Lincolns don't see the need for Farraris.
 
I think the new Thunderbolt bus is great. To me, it's going to be a great dock connector.

I mean since it's PCIe based... you can have Firewire, USB and external video out of the same cable. I think we're going to see some docking product/cable out there really soon.
 
That was a nice video they had. I wonder why they didn't use a Mac for that demo? Oh wait, that's right, because Steve "I think I'm God" Jobs has decided for all of us that we cannot have Blu-Ray in or on our Macs, even as an extra cost option! If there is one characteristic that man possesses that can match and even exceed his salesmanship and ability to make weak-willed followers think that he is some kind of prophet, it is his arrogance!!! All right, rant over. I just had to get it out of my system!
 
it's too fast

Transferring 5Gb in a few seconds. It's hard for me to comprehend. But I really like it. :)
 
That's a great news for musicians... and not only for laptops, but also to reduce the need to buy a Mac Pro over an iMac.

Most of the case, we buy a Mac Pro to get more drives (for large storage for audio, video, backup with fast access... or for a DSP card, etc...)

Today, with the power of MacBook and iMac, we don't need DSP card anymore. So it will be possible to daisy chain audio interfaces with external drives and it will work like a charm...

Spid
 
So here's what I don't get, can you have one cable that has two ends one display port end and one regular thunderbolt end so you can use one cable for two devices? Or do you need a hub?
 
fishmoose said:
So here's what I don't get, can you have one cable that has two ends one display port end and one regular thunderbolt end so you can use one cable for two devices? Or do you need a hub?
Click to expand...

TB --> Something that uses TB --> Display Port monitor (1.2 or higher, 1.1 needs to be at end of chain) --> Another thing that uses TB. Like FW cases, most if not all TB devices will have 2 ports so you can continue the chain.
 
sbrhwkp3 said:
Syncing is going to be so much easier. Wow.
Click to expand...
Syncing with what? That S-L-O-W flash memory in your iOS device?

I suspect that the peak transfer rates on the flash memory that Apple uses in their iOS devices is pretty much already maxed out over USB2. Besides that, none of your existing devices are suddenly going to get faster just because you may someday be able to use an adapter to connect them to the new Thunderbolt port.
 
CIA said:
At first my head exploded over this idea. Moving the graphics card out of the PC and into the monitor. Great for some things, (upgradeable monitors? hmmm). After pondering it, for high end graphics cards you need a lot of cooling. People like quiet PC's. So do you really want the fan of your Mega graphics card built into the display (upgradeable or not) buzzing away while you game 3 feet away? I'd rather keep the noisy stuff away from my face.
Click to expand...

A single high speed video card would saturate the entire Thunderbolt bus already. Since a single PCIe 16 lane slot uses 8 Gb already.
A lot of devices have tried daisy chaining before, it generally worked, but was always much better on it's own bus.

I'm in film production and we already use 10 Gb Ethernet and SAS card to get the same speeds. And we generally need to per device. So thunderbolt doesn't seem magic in the sense of offering unlimited bandwidth. But it may make things simpler.
My number one use will be Raid arrays.
I don't see the point of using this for devices like mice, USB is perfect for it.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom
Back